10.31.2011
10.30.2011
Sept, par Pacôme Thiellement - III
5. « Black & Tan Fantasy » : Quand Thelonious Monk joue Duke Ellington, filtrant ses arrangements grandioses et son exquise délicatesse, tout ce qu’il y a de profondément freak dans la musique du maître apparaît.
10.29.2011
Sept, par Pacôme Thiellement - II
6. « The Pilgrimage » : Au-delà du rythme, au-delà de l’harmonie et des notes de notre gamme, Harry Partch a trouvé quelque chose que nous ne connaissons pas mais que nous savons être nôtre.
10.26.2011
Sept, par Pacôme Thiellement - I
Sept morceaux. Sept photos. Sept phrases.
7. « If I Were You » : Les chansons de Billie Holiday naissent de la banale atrocité de la vie ; elles sont transmutés par la dignité et le courage, et elles produisent une lumière éclatante qui se réfracte sur toutes choses.
10.24.2011
Eternal Return: Alasdair Roberts (with Luke Fowler)
Alasdair Roberts & Luke Fowler, Under no Enchantment (But my Own), 2009. Produced by Drag City taken from the 2009 album Spoils. Film and original sound recorded on location around Glasgow and Callander on a Bolex 16mm camera and Hard Disk recorder with MS Sennheiser microphones. Transfered to digital medium for editing and distrubtion.
"Q: In the U.S., "folk music" still has the connotation of being a populist kind of thing, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie – plainspoken songs about the working class, simple melodies, straightforward lyrics, etc. But in the folk music of Ireland/England/Scotland, there seems to be more surrealism/symbolism, and I definitely feel like your songs reflect this. Where do you think these surrealistic leanings come from? I have a theory – the Book of Revelations – but I'm interested in your thoughts on the subject.
A: I suppose that kind of surrealism/symbolism in the British music has always been there in things like nonsense and topsy-turvy songs and riddling traditions which go back centuries. Often the old ballads seem like symbolist texts in a way, but they're more complex and polyvalent than that. The Revelations thing... I suppose that when I was writing the songs I was spending too much time alone reading things like that, also the Book of Ezekiel, as well as Jungian stuff, particularly "Seven Sermons to the Dead" and Emma Jung's book on the grail legend, Gnostic texts, "The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz" as well as a lot of mythological stuff – The Irish Tain (Cattle Raid of Cooley in Colm Toibin's splendid translation) and the Welsh Four Branches of the Mabinogi (in Sioned Davies recent great translation), as well as the Grimm stories, traditional Scottish folk tales from the late Duncan Williamson and Robert Graves' collections of Greek myths ... and a book of mediaeval Gaelic poetry in translation called "Songbook of the Pillagers" and Alexander Carmichael's "Carmina Gadelica", all things which will have continuing interest for me... and listening to a lot of Scottish, English, Irish traditional singers and songs, at the same time trying to absorb and explore some of my German heritage by listening to Wagner and reading Thomas Mann and Goethe und so weiter ... all of which influences seeped into the songs to some extent ... although it's hardly Wagner, haha!!! I'd just come back from tour in the States and was rediscovering my Scottishness and Europeanness, I suppose. At the moment, I'm beginning to explore Scottish Gaelic song and music a lot more and am hoping to learn the language eventually, which I feel I should have done years ago.
There are some amazing singers in this land. The idea of "the great unveiling" in one song I suppose is a reference to some idea of imminent revelation; these do seem like dark and turmoiled times. It's hard to comprehend the vastness and purpose of the cosmos and one's place in it, the point of one's endeavours in whatever field. I don't subscribe to any particular belief system but I suppose some of these songs are interrogations of faith and so on... the idea that there might be some innate religiosity to which certain people are predisposed... (I don't subscribe to any particular faith but I wonder whether one day that might change in some great unveiling) and the idea of the "Celtic"... not wanting to sound too pompous about it. The first song has specifically Jungian references to the "sermons seven" and mandalas... it's like a quest song against conflict and towards individuation. I know a lot of people with strong political or religious convictions whose musical and artistic practice is guided by that – in some ways I envy that kind of certitude, but I suppose my thing is always about flexibility, multiplicity, confusion wanting to reflect the turmoil of reality... always trying to remember that the oar in the ocean is a winnowing fan on dry land.
Was traditional music something you grew up singing/playing, or did it come to you later in life? What was it that made you fall in love with this kind of music? What were some of your early experiences with the genre – performers, recordings?
My father Alan was a guitarist and singer – he had a duo with a guy called Dougie MacLean. They toured a lot in Europe in the seventies and my folks also ran a booking agency in Germany for a while. One of my earliest influences guitar-wise and vocally was an English singer called Nic Jones – a beautiful guitar style and voice. I think like a lot of people of my generation there's a complex relation to ideas of "tradition" – a respect for it and at the same time a slight repulsion towards aspects of it – the awareness of the wideness and complexity of music-making which goes on, the sheer overwhelming amount of music being made which could give potential influence ... which some days makes one forlorn but other days give one certainty that whatever one does is of some kind of worth. I suppose that on the record the first song in some ways explores the idea of "eternal return" – I was reading Mircea Eliade on the subject, and Nietzsche Nietzsche obviously wrote about it – I became obsessed with the idea and the various ways in which it could be configured. There's obviously the classic image of the ouroubouros serpent ouroubouros serpent ... but I was also think about it in terms of the myth of progress – when what we think of as progress is actually destruction. Like Kekule's ring, Benzene. And the fact that I personally constantly return to Song as a form of "expression" or creation rather than, say, improvisation or composition. This extends into another theme of the record in the song about Ned Ludd, the idea that "technology" is an emancipatory force.
Everywhere I go I hear amazing musicians from all kinds of fields, which is a challenge to one to improve ... but it also makes me wonder about how to make music which is in some way unique and interesting without relying on virtuosity, and this is where The Shaggs, say, give me hope – I suppose this time my way of trying to do it was by writing a bunch of "syncretic"songs with a lot of words in them and trying to have them arranged and structured in new ways.
Listening to Spoils for the first few times, I pictured the songs being set in the distant past, but on closer inspection, it seems that they could be set in the present day, or even in the future. Do you see these songs as having a specific time-period setting or are they meant to be more timeless in that regard?
I suppose it comes back to one configuration of the idea of "eternal return" – of history repeating. War and pestilence have always been and will always be – the Crusaders of yore have their parallels in the present day and in the distant past. War and wrongness have always and will ever be ... as will love, kindness and altruism, one likes to believe. There are some very specific contemporary references on the record – "empty browsers" being a prominent one – but for some reason in the songs I'm always drawn back to something more elemental and organic ... the "natural world." But a song like "So Bored Was I" there's a reference to a very specific contemporary piece of psychological research I'd read about, the idea of the "dark triad" of personality types which meet in the Alpha Male – narcissism, sociopathy and Machiavellianism, which I kind of conflated with the idea of the Three Ages of Man singing together. Anyway, I don't have a specific time period in mind – more like when I sing the songs I'm closing my eyes and mentally navigating a physical landscape and very much associate certain songs with specific experiences and individuals ... in some ways a few of them are autobiographical, in a veiled, symbolic kind of way.
The band interplay on Spoils is great-- what do you look for in your musical accompanists? Is being immersed in folk/trad music a requirement?
Immersion in traditional/folk music is not a requirement at all ... the players on Spoils come from a very wide array of musical backgrounds. In some ways this was my thought about the record being "syncretic" – that in its arrangements and personnel it would yoke together many possibly contradictory standpoints and belief systems ... for example by having Alex, a drummer extremely knowledgeable about and well versed in free improvisation playing with Gordon, who has studied lute, baroque guitar and theorbo and normally interprets the historical repertoires of those instruments ... completely different musical backgrounds. I actually met Gordon in an airport – he let me skip the queue – I doubt we'd have worked together if it hadn't been for that chance meeting. And David McGuinness who did the viol arrangements and played harpsichord and harmonium is a musical savant and virtuoso all round. There are too many players to mention but it was such an honour that all these talents were interested in the record project and gave their time and effort for the songs.
There are so many wonderful and strange words and phrases on this record – "desacralised," "Encrusted with amethyst and topaz and beryl," "The shackled harper," "bilious and saturnine," "Sterile rams and simulacrum," etc. Where do you get these phrases – are they borrowed from old texts or are they of your own invention? What is it that you love about this archaic-sounding language?
Sometimes I do pilfer words from whatever I'm reading - see the list I've already given... and a lot of poetry and so on which I've read. Before I was really into music I think I was more into language - if I hadn't gone into music I might've done something like historical or comparative linguistics. Maybe I still will. I'm particularly fascinated by the Nostratic hypothesis ... language in general, but I've never been that focused on one language in particular apart from English (though I was raised with a bit of German at first)."
(from an interview from 2009 with Tyler Wilcox on Junkmedia)
10.23.2011
Ryūichi Sakamoto, Discord (1998)
"A: I wanted to follow the philosophy of John Cage, that there's no boundary between sound and noise. I have never been able to accomplish that before as an artist. I've used noise a lot in the past. I think with this, I have, I hope, truly focused on deconstructing that boundary.
Q: I know Debussy and Satie are inspirations. You did an aptly titled album in 1997 called Discord that you made as your introduction to classical music. Do you think you bring something to classical music that hasn't been there before?
A: The classical background of mine is always there. Sometimes it's more obvious than others. I feel strange saying this about myself, but I have many aspects to my sound — many faces or sides, if you will. I think my love of techno, world music, bossa nova, whatever, it all comes out. This is all me. Certain audiences claim me for their own, some from electro pop, some just soundtracks. There are people who know me for opera. But even the music of Yellow Magic Orchestra, which was, what, some 30 years ago, you can hear elements of symphonic music." (from an interview with. A.D. Amorosi, 2010)
Discord is a "multimedia" project by Riyuichi Sakamoto from 1998. It has been developed with the collaboration of DJ Spooky, David Torn and "The Orchestra", conducted by Yutaka Sado. Released in 1998, it was composed of an audio CD with a blue pseudo-monochrome cover, which presented a composition divided in four tracks, and offered an audiovisual counterpoint when played on a computer.
More can be seen on the project's website.
Ryūichi Sakamoto, Discord
Sony Classical, 1998
01. Grief
02. Anger
03. Prayer
04. Salvation
.zip
10.21.2011
10.20.2011
10.19.2011
⌘ (Compilation, 2011)
E. Rossetti
d'Eon, Transparency
James Ferraro, Life In A Day
Ford & Lopatin, World of Regret (Instrumental version)
Light Asylum, A Certain Someone
Tropic Of Cancer, Be Brave (Richard H Kirk Remix)
John Maus, Quantum Leap
Prins Thomas, Ny Maskin
SLEEP ∞ OVER, Casual Diamond (Laurel Halo Remix)
Protect-U, Double Rainbow
The Jet Age of Tomorrow, Love In The Purple Forest
10.18.2011
Day Tripper
Etienne O'Leary, Voyageur diurne, 1966
"La filmographie du réalisateur québécois Étienne O’Leary comprend trois films expérimentaux complétés à Paris entre 1966 et 1968. Day tripper, Homeo (aka Homeo : Minor death : Coming back from going home) et Chromo sud constituent un cinéma de résistance. Les contributions d’Étienne O’Leary au cinéma underground français ne se limitent cependant pas qu’à l’introduction d’un nouveau langage cinématographique. La virulence de son œuvre repose sur trois trames sonores qu’il compose lui-même durant la deuxième moitié de la décennie soixante – c’est une musique inquiétante qui n’a d’écho que dans les films pour lesquels elle a été conçue".
More about Etienne O'Leary, Musique de Films (1966-1968) here
10.17.2011
10.16.2011
Brainwaves: Valley of the Sun Publishing
From 4 Hours Restorative Sleep Hypnosis, by Dick Sutphen
Valley of the Sun Publishing
From Mind Travel, by Dick Sutphen
Nightingale-Conant Corporation
"This altered state will enable you to:
- enhance mental perception by combining sensory and emotional visualizations
- create a "Higher Self Sanctuary" where you are free to explore and program your mind
- access your own past-life experiences and fine solutions to present day issues in your past life scenarios
- explore past, future and remote events
- practice pre-cognition on command by transcending physical boundaries of time and space
- heal physical and psychological challenges by travelling to the source of these problems"
From Trance Sex, by Dick Sutphen
Music, Theta Waves & Sensual Subliminal Suggestions
Valley of the Sun Publishings, "Hypnotic Music" series
"For erotic massage and making love. You’ll hear soothing music, combined with trance-inducing theta waves -- resulting in a shared, eyes-open altered state of consciousness. Embedded in the music are sensual subliminal suggestions. The expected result is an enhanced sexual union -- a merging of two souls who experience each other at a deeper level.
Lovers may perceive shared visions. Some have reported feeling an a new sense of oneness. Others have claimed a soul-bonding “afterglow” which lingered long after making love. Use regularly to enhance effectiveness. When you’re both ready to fully awaken, count yourself up from one to five and say the words, “Wide Awake.”
The Subliminal Suggestions. The following words are repeated over and over behind the music -- unheard by your conscious mind, but perceived by your unconscious. “Sensual. Bonding. Seductive. Love. Sex. Union. Two into one. Arousal. Desire. Passion. Merge soul energy. Become one. Longing. Attain wholeness. Completeness. Love. Beloved. Whispered words. Whispered desires. Love. Passion. Melding. Merging. Intensity. Excitement. Love. Passion. Hunger. Thirst. Love. Craving. Carnal. Heat. Urgency. Love. Flesh. Tantalizing. Zeal. Stroking. Fondling. Love. Taste. Rhythm. Passion. Love. Satisfaction.”
Biography
"Dick Sutphen has established distinguished careers in advertising and audio publishing, in addition to writing several bestselling books and conducting seminars for over 185,000 people.
Dick grew up in Nebraska in the 1950s and after high school worked in an advertising agency art department for a year before attending the Art Center School in Los Angeles, California. Starting out as an art director for major advertising agencies, he went on to receive over 150 awards for creating outstanding advertising and design for clients such as Scotch Tape and Betty Crocker. While still working for the agencies, he launched a publishing company on the side and was soon selling books to the professional advertising market internationally. His book, The Mad Old Ads was published in 1966 (McGraw Hill--U.S. and W.H. Allen--England) and received huge reviews, including a full page in Newsweek.
The publishing venture encouraged him to open his own business--a creative studio, which initially serviced ad agencies in Minneapolis, while also creating hundreds of contemporary cards for Hallmark. After moving his studio to Scottsdale, Arizona, Dick continued to work with ad agencies and directly for clients such as Texaco Aviation, the city of Scottsdale and political candidates. He expanded his writing to include a series four-wheel drive articles for Outdoor Arizona magazine and humorous articles for the local newspapers.
Effective advertising is the power of persuasion. In the mid-seventies, Sutphen sought to expand his understanding of this power by studying brain/mind technology and hypnosis. One of the studio offices became the Scottsdale Hypnosis Center--a place to experiment with metaphysics, group hypnosis and past-life regression.
As a result of these explorations, in 1976 he created and marketed the first prerecorded hypnosis tapes through his own company, Valley of the Sun Publishing. Today, the company is a leader in this field, offering over 200 audio and video titles in world-wide release. Valley of the Sun New Age music is often on distributors' top-ten lists.
The Hypnosis Center explorations also led to writing a book: You Were Born Again To Be Together (Simon & Schuster Pocket Books 1976). It has never gone out of print and has sold nearly a million copies. Six additional titles on reincarnation and karma followed from Pocket Books, including Predestined Love, Finding Your Answers Within, Earthly Purpose, and The Oracle Within. Valley of the Sun published 12 more metaphysical titles. A 1991 dark-fantasy collection of short stories published by Spine-Tingling Press was nominated for a Bram Stoker writing award.
Dick is often a featured speaker at conventions such as the American Council of Hypnotherapy. Sutphen Seminars are conducted annually in as many as 35 U.S. cities and England, Ireland and Australia. He has appeared on hundreds of local and national radio and TV shows, including Phil Donahue, Good Morning America, and Tom Snyder, where he conducted the first televised past-life regression. David Susskind built a 90-minute show around Dick's work.
Dick and Tara Sutphen have been together since 1983 and live in Malibu, California with their children, horses, dogs and cats. Their reincarnation research is currently centered upon the concept of past-life themes and documenting one of Tara's case histories--a fascinating past-life/spirit guide connection that relates back to a shared incarnation in France."
(From Valley of the Sun's website)
10.15.2011
10.13.2011
Scopic Pulsion
Eric Duvivier, La Femme 100 têtes (1967), after Max Ernst collage novel from 1929
"The visual poem belongs to a certain degree to the ancestors of cinema. The desire to bring it to the screen seems only natural. (…) Eric Duvivier’s attempt is a considerable success and I’m pleased to welcome it as the best surrealist film offered to us in thirty years or more." (
André Pieyre de Mandiargues)
10.11.2011
Destroy All Monsters, I Started a Joke (2011)
Destroy All Monsters, I Started a Joke
Unreleased, 2011
I Started a Joke - 4:58 - Destroy All Monsters, 2002 Live at ATP festival
I Love You But You're Dead - 2:07 - Destroy All Monsters 1975 w: Niagara /m: Cary Loren
Bebop Be - 0:47 - Jim Shaw - 1978
Broken Mirrors rev - 5:41 - DAM 1978, w/m: Benjamin Miller
Alice Coltrane - 7:25 - Destroy All Monsters - 2000 Los Angeles, practice session
Them; a DAM Symphony, first movement - 6:15 - Destroy All Monsters 1976
Queen of Egypt - 3:37 - Destroy All Monsters 1977
We're Gauche - 0:37 - DAM w/ Lincoln Yako 1975
Untitled Solo Guitar - 1:03 - Jim Shaw - 1977
November 22nd,1963 - 4:36 - Destroy All Monsters w/Cary Loren m: Ron Asheton
Too Bad for You - 2:09 - Destroy All Monsters w/m Cary Loren
It,It,It - 1:09 - /m Benjamin Miller
Body Parts (testicle bagpipes) - 1:51 - Destroy All Monsters, practice session 2002
Horrid Nightmare - 1:43 - Destroy All Monsters w/m Cary Loren
Untitled Solo Guitar #2 - 11:00 - Jim Shaw 1978
The Killer Walked - 0:43 - DAM Live at COCA, Seattle, WA 2000
small world - 2:30 - Destroy All Monsters ATP, 2002
Get Out of My Bedroom - 1:39 - Cary & Jackie Loren, Detroit, 1967
johnny_ala_mode - 2:54 - Mike Kelley & Jim Shaw DAM Audio letter, 1977
outerlimits_overdrive - 5:58 - Destroy All Monsters Practice sessions, 1998
Love Like Yours and Mine - 0:36 - Jim Shaw, 1977
10.09.2011
Autoportrait d'un schizophrène
Eric Duvivier, Autoportrait d'un schizophrène, 1977
This documentary movie was shot by Eric Duvivier with Professor D.J. Duché in 1977. Starring actor and film maker Pierre Clementi, it is conceived as a self portrait of a schizophreniac. Produced in a medical context, it appears, in fact, to be visionary visual poem trying to render the audiovisual perception of the world by a man who is subject to schizophrenia in the Paris of the late 70's. Featuring (I suppose) shots by Clementi himself and ghostly psychedelic evocations of Léo Ferré and free jazz music an astronaut, parisian dandies and a white mask, the Pompidou Centre and Light Conical Intersect by Gordon Matta-Clark...
More soon about Duvivier.
10.07.2011
10.06.2011
Free record of the week: Danger Doom's Occult Hymn
Danger Doom, Occult Hymn
Adult Swim, 2006
Occult Hymn is a follow-up EP to Danger Doom's debut album The Mouse & The Mask. It contains seven tracks and was released as a free download at Adult Swim's website on May 30, 2006. Its name is a reference to a line in Danger Doom's song A.T.H.F., and intentionally rhymes with "Adult Swim."
1. "Skit 1" – Featuring Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force
2. "El Chupa Nibre Remix" – Featuring characters from SquidBillies & The Sheriff
3. "Perfect Hair II" – Featuring characters from Perfect Hair Forever (Contains a sample of "Hogan's Thing" by Simon Haseley)
4. "Korn Dogz" – Featuring characters from 12 oz. Mouse.(Contains sample of "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams" by Nico)
5. "Skit 2" – Featuring characters from Minoriteam
6. "Sofa King Remix" – Featuring characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force
7. "Space Ho's (Madlib Remix)" (Contains a sample of "An Afterthought" by Black Widow (band) and "pénélope au balcon" by CHUTE LIBRE)
10.05.2011
Pulchritude
Heaven & Earth, Feel The Spirit
Billy Nicholls, It Brings Me Down
Shirley Collins & Davy Graham, Dearest Dear
Bobbie Gentry, Papa, Won't You Let Me Go To Town With You
10.04.2011
Brainwaves: Monroe Products
Robert Allen Monroe (October 30, 1915–March 17, 1995) was a New York radio broadcasting executive who became known for his research into altered consciousness. His 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body is credited with popularizing the term "out-of-body experience". Monroe achieved world-wide recognition as an explorer of human consciousness. His research, beginning in the 1950s, produced evidence that specific sound patterns have identifiable, beneficial effects on our capabilities. For example, certain combinations of frequencies appeared to enhance alertness; others to induce sleep; and still others to evoke expanded states of consciousness. Assisted by specialists in psychology, medicine, biochemistry, psychiatry, electrical engineering, physics, and education, Robert Monroe developed Hemi-Sync®, a patented audio technology that is claimed to facilitate enhanced performance. He is also notable as one of the founders of the Jefferson Cable Corporation, the first cable company to cover central Virginia. (From Wikipedia)
"Enjoy a totally refreshing nap in only 30 minutes. Verbal guidance and Hemi-Sync® provide you with a unique opportunity to obtain deeply restorative rest. Benefit from Catnapper's proven effectiveness during work or study breaks or to re-energize for the evening. Catnapper is also effective for countering the effects of jet lag, coping with irregular schedules or as the ultimate pick-me-up anytime. (Verbal; 30 min.). Mind Food Series".
"Monroe Product's binaural beat CDs can help you experience enhanced mental, physical, and emotional states. Robert Monroe's work inspired an entire industry of mind/brain products. After 50 years of research, and thousands of lab sessions, the internationally acclaimed patented Hemi-Sync® process remains unparalleled in its ability to assist us in harnessing our human potential. Thanks to the cooperation of notable medical institutions and universities, the scientifically and clinically proven Hemi-Sync® technology continues to be the focus of a variety of specialized research projects. In addition, many therapists, physicians, educators, and other professionals use Hemi-Sync® extensively. Such research is indispensable in revealing the influence of specific Hemi-Sync® sound patterns on consciousness. Over the years, these efforts have resulted in the development of scores of individual products for specific applications such as focused attention, stress management, meditation, sleep enhancement, and pain management, to name a few". (From Catnapper's liner notes)
Thanks to Joachim Koester for the gift.
10.02.2011
Talisman
Anthony Coleman, Trend Man
Frank London, Golem Khosidl
Paul Shapiro, Ma Lecha Hayam
Jenny Scheinman, The Rabbi's Lover
John Zorn (Bar Kokhba), Idalah-Abal
The Cracow Klezmer Band, Devil Circle
Tim Sparks, Hamisha Asar
Paul Brody, An Eye for a You
Zakarya (Yves Weyh), Du Goudron et des Plumes
New Klezmer Trio, The Because of
V/A (The Music of Jacob do Bandolim), Sempre Teu
Rafi Malkiel, Waves
Anthony Coleman, Quando el Rey Nimrod
Shadow relics : summer will never end
Rainbo Video, Ultraviolet
Stag Hare, To Coyoto To Hop
Bryter Layter, Understanding Interdependance
The Left Banke, Ivy Ivy
Ed Askew, This is the end
Download here.
Remember Ira Cohen (1935-2011)
10.01.2011
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